New Plugin: Global Search (version 0.1.6.1ß)

[d-fader]

UPDATED October 5th, 2008

GlobalSearch (version 0.1.6.1ß)
This plugin (at the moment) allows you to search through your complete music
library (including lyrics if available) and provides functionality to control
what you want to do with the search results.
It was developed due to the frustration that up until now you can only search
in the on-screen list of items (i.e. filter).


Summary
Project name: GlobalSearch
Type: MediaPortal Window plugin
Version: 0.1.6.1ß
Release date: October 5th, 2008
Author: d-fader
Contact: dfader(at)gmail.com
License: GNU General Public License



Features

New in this release (0.1.6.1ß)
- Bugfix: Lyrics search didn't work very well due to several reasons, fixed.
- Lyrics search takes quite long due to SQLite, I have disabled it by default. Click the 'Search fields' button to
enable it for your search (item 4).
- After you've searched, the listview with the results will be automatically focussed, thanks trevor!


0.1.6ß
- When the MyLyrics plug-in is installed you can also search through lyrics! To find a lyric,
all words have to match and all punctuation marks are removed (So searching for 'wasnt' will also
match wasn't. GS can only search through the lyrics indexed by MyLyrics.
- Bugfix: Searching with non-alphanumeric characters like é, ë, ä, å, etc. resulted in GS not finding anything.


0.1.5ß
- MPI support
- Configuration support (from within the configuration part of MP)
- Configuration option: Keyboard type (normal or SMS-styled input)
- When you've entered a query, GlobalSearch will directly search (the search
button is gone).
- Search button replaced with 'Last searches', which shows a list of your
search history (up to 10 items). This will be saved, so when you restart
MP, the search history will not be void.
- Extra option in context-menu of results (i button on remote or F9 on keyboard) -> Add all to playlist (adds all results to the current playlist)

0.1ß
- Globally search music library
- Filter Artist, Album, Filename, Songname, Year and Genre
- Case sensitivity support
- Play a single result (directly or add to playlist)
- Add album of a single result to the playlist
- Add single result to favorites
- Switch to playlist or playing now
- View details of a single result, including cover art

How to search
The search engine will search with an AND operator between each word. This
means that searching for Gun Rose will find Guns and Roses as well as
Gun's and roses. When you want to search for a specific text, use double
quotes. This means that "Gun Rose" will specifically search for Gun Rose and
won't return Guns and Roses.


Requirements
MediaPortal 1.0.0 RC2
MediaPortal 1.0.0 RC2 SVN


To-do (x = done)
x Save search options (and/or results)
- Improve it to become a REAL global search (music, movies, pictures, etc.)
x Blue-two wide support (it works, but nothing is aligned at the moment)
- Other skin support
- Search progress
- Integration with MyMusic (and MyMovies, MyPictures, etc.), longshot.


Installation Instructions

Automatic
Use the MPI.

Manual
- Shutdown MediaPortal
- Copy the plugins & skin directory to your MediaPortal directory
(e.g.: c:\Program Files\Team-MediaPortal\MediaPortal). If you
don't have MyLyrics installed, also copy LyricsEngine.dll to your
MediaPortal directory.
- Start MediaPortal


Version History
0.1.6ß 2008/10/03 - Added support for lyrics and fixed non-alphanumeric searching (é ë ä, etc.) bug.
0.1.5ß 2008/07/29 - Added configuration (SMS styled input), search history and 'add all to playlist'.
0.1.1ß 2007/06/08 - Added support for the 0.2.3 RC2 version of MediaPortal which has a revised Music Database structure, no new features yet.
0.1ß 2007/10/08 - Initial release (search and browse through the music library)


Thanks
Nickola - Thanks for the SMS styled input code (although it's pretty Basic atm )
Skinners - Thanks for implementing GS in your skins!
Supporters - Thanks for helping me out on the forum!

Sebastian Moleski - Thanks for the TStringList (Delphi class) port. I've made
some changes to though (naming and bufixes)


Words from the author

October 3th, 2008
Well, the 0.1.5ß seems to have had no bugs at all (since I received no bugreports), or
nobody but me is using this plugin , so here's version 0.1.6ß as a real release!
Anyway, I'm back to annoy you with more features! To be exact: You can now search through
the lyrics of a song too! This happens automatically when you have the MyLyrics plugin
installed and GS can only search through the lyrics that are indexed, but hey, it's cool,
right? Furthermore el_gato helped me to identify and solve a bug in the searching code,
since searching for all non-alphanumeric characters like ë and ä would return nothing at all,
thanks for that!
For now, I'm off to rob a bank, ...I love GTA



July 29th, 2008
Well well, finally, after graduating (aced it of course, *cough*) I found some time
to dive into this gem (at least for me it is ) again. I've finally added a configuration
dialog which looks pretty neat if I may say so. You can select your input style in this
dialog. The SMS-styled input can be improved somewhat, but hey, at least you
can finally input your favorite artists in a 2.0 way
For now, still no support for video files, but I promise I will dive into that soon! I
hope you can wait just a little bit longer (to implement this, it takes some more time,
since there need I need to create some new GUI screens).
Last but not least, you can now add all results to the playlist with a single click in the
context menu of the result list, thanks 'rsbrux' (who came with the idea)!
Oh yeah, I've added an MPI installer for you lazy asses too, hope you like it
Well, that's it for now, have fun and keep searching! ...honey, where's my beer!?


October 8th, 2007
Hi again! This is just a minor revision of the plug-in with an update to
support the new database structure of the Music section in MediaPortal.
First of all, thanks for all the feedback I've been getting from all of
you guys and girls (?). I have written them down on some paper which
is floating around somewhere in the universe . I know the plug-in needs to
be expanded, I just don't have the time, but when I do, I will add all those nice
features! Oh yeah, there are some contacts about integrating the plug-in in the
Music section, but that still has to be built, so please, hold on and for now:
Search, play and swing!


June 8th, 2007
Hi! Thanks for trying this new plug-in for MediaPortal. I'll try to write
some words with every new release. This is my first Visual Studio project, so
it was (and IS) quite a challenge to master the IDE
I've made an abstract object model which makes it possible to search anything,
although you can only search through your music library at the moment.
I have taken into account that a multi-threaded search will be one of the
future possibilities, so the object model is ready for that, although nothing
thread-safe (critical sections, synchronization) is done yet.
I would like to get some feedback on the plug-in so we can decide what's the
next best step and on which part we should focus. Feel free to review the code,
cause I hate bad designed code (though that's my specialty )
Oh yeah, since there wasn't a multi-select dialog (I couldn't find it anyway),
I 'hacked' my way around the DialogMenu to make a descendant that supports
multi select lists (used when specifying search fields). Feel free to use or
review it. Its skin file is DialogMultiSelect.xml .
Last but not least: have fun with the plugin!

[JulianBuss]

very cool, I'm glad you took the challenge :-)
I assume currently only BluTwo skin is supported? Perhaps you could contact PsychoReptile so he includes your plugin the famous Revision skin?

[d-fader]

Originally Posted by JulianBuss

very cool, I'm glad you took the challenge :-)

Thanks a lot! Also glad I took the challenge, since it really helps my everlasting search through the music library, lol

Originally Posted by JulianBuss

I assume currently only BluTwo skin is supported?

Correct, BlueTwo wide works, but the aligment ...sucks. Will try to manage that soon, just don't have any spare time :/

Originally Posted by JulianBuss

Perhaps you could contact PsychoReptile so he includes your plugin the famous Revision skin?

"Your private message has been sent. You will now be taken to your PM list. Thanks!"


Greetz!

[Edna]

I have been missing this feature for soo long!
You truly made my day!

[The_Stig]

Very nice one! I like it very much!
Suggestions to your plugin:
1. How about an option to add everything/more than one item from Search to the Playlist? (Maybe with a kind of mark files option or something like that). E.G. I search Genre for Electronics and want to hear every song of that genre. I know that possible with the standard search, but more complicated.
2. How about adding the rating to search options? Goal would be to generate a search like Genre=Jazz and Rating=5 Stars.

EDIT
3. The current search-keyboard is very slow and complicated to use. How about using the SMS-Style-Input as it is integrated in MyTV->Scheduled->Search? There it doesn't work too well, but since your search only searches DB after hitting "Search" and not directly while inputting the characters i guess it could work?!?
/EDIT

But as I said, I like it already now very much and appreciate your work!

Regards

[snorre]

Thanks for this wonderful plugin! It works like a charm!

Originally Posted by The_Stig

3. The current search-keyboard is very slow and complicated to use. How about using the SMS-Style-Input as it is integrated in MyTV->Scheduled->Search? There it doesn't work too well, but since your search only searches DB after hitting "Search" and not directly while inputting the characters i guess it could work?!?

I agree that the keyboard is somewhat slow, but for me being a touch screen user I still prefer the keyboard over sms input. Maybe an option to choose between both of them?

Snorre

[d-fader]

Okay, after receiving some feedback, this is what I will concentrate on in the following release, planned for next week or the week after that:

- Support for SMS input, the full keyboard will be still supported too
- Support for BlueTwo Wide (especially the details screen has a lot of overlaps)
- More drilling (see the post of The_Stig). I think an easy solution for his first issue is to drill down from the details screen (e.g. filter all with the current album, genre, etc), meaning you will narrow the search results
- Extra search field: Rating, this will be separate from the 'normal' searchfield so you can create an 'and'.
- Better documentation of the code (it's documented at the moment, but it could be loads better )

In the future it might be needed to enhance the search functionality (meaning you can search on album, genre and songname e.g.). This can also be achieved by seacrching through the current search results (similar to the 'drilling' feature described).

When I need to focus on something else, please post here, maybe I'll change my efforts

[The_Stig]

Great news! I am looking forward to it!

[rsbrux]

Originally Posted by d-fader

I guess the SMS input should be a new overlay window like the virtual keyboard since a lot of people wasnt to use it! It seems to be a separate control now (like a button or a label).

I don't know anything about the code structure, but from a user's perspective, there is no reason for another overlay. The RC numeric keys should just type into the existing "search phrase" field, just as the normal keyboard does.
This is the way "SMS keying" works in Windows MCE, for example.
From this point of view, it's nothing specific to your global search for MePo, but something which could benefit all of the MePo search functions.

[The_Stig]

Yeah, the overlay could stay and when entering a number it shouldn't use the number but the sms-input (2=a,b,c,2; 3=d,e,f; and so on). That would do the trick as well and both ways would be integrated.